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“That’s me,” she whispered and looked over her shoulder at Lucian. She didn’t wait for his answer and watched the different version of herself, noting the bedraggled state of her clothes. How thin she looked. Hungry. But she was smiling and singing. “I don’t remember this,” Brinna said, looking over her shoulder at Lucian once more. His eyes were on that singing Brinna, a look on his face she couldn’t interpret.
He shook his head. “You wouldn’t. It was a different version of you. Of me.” He nodded toward a different area of the meadow.
Brinna turned, scanning, and spotted a different Lucian lurking in the shadow of the trees, watching. Suddenly, Lucian’s heat closed in behind her as he transferred her hand to his other.
“It isn’t what you are thinking,” he said, his voice soft. She could feel the soft graze of his mouth, the gentle movement of his breath against her ear. Eager energy raced across her skin. “I admit I know it looks bad.”
Enjoying the closeness, and desirous of more sensations swirling inside her, Brinna took a step back, nearer to him. She tilted her head to invite him closer, her heart jumping higher into her throat, constricting with longing. “You were watching me?”
Lucian wrapped their connected hands around her front, pressing their hands against her belly and closing the distance so that the front of his body fit against her back. Then he slid his hands up her arms to her shoulders. “I was looking for a key keeper. To break Nix’s spell.” He moved her hair, exposing her neck.
“Auri.”
Lucian made another one of those humming noises, then she felt his warm breath on her neck, raising chills, blissful ones, on her skin.
“But that isn’t Auri,” she whispered.
“I saw you first.” She felt his touch, just the hint of one, skim from the nape of her exposed neck down to her shoulder.
Her breath caught, but she was somehow able to say, “This was before the spell? A different time?”
He hummed again, his touch retracing its path. “I listened to you sing.”
“But I didn’t find the key?”
Lucian stilled, then disconnected, and she missed his proximity. He cleared his throat. “I didn’t go through with showing you where it was.”
She turned around, facing him. “Why?”
His brows arched over his golden eyes. “I don’t–” He took another step back.
Brinna stepped toward him and grabbed his hand. “Stay. Don’t run, Lucian. Stay here, with me.”
He swallowed; his gaze nearly tortured with whatever was moving through his thoughts. Then his features relaxed, as though he’d come to an internal understanding, and he stepped closer, crowding her, his hands framing her face. His eyes skipped over her features, tracing them with his gaze. “I didn’t want you to find it.”
Brinna reached out and placed a hand over his heart, just as hers thumped wildly and heated with bright warmth. She could feel the furious rhythm of his own under her palm. “Why?”
He laid his hand over hers, and his heat burned up her arm, sizzled through to her spine, and raced down to heat the very center of her being. “I’d trapped my brother, and instead of leading you to the key like I was supposed to, I closed the way, blocking you from it. Trapped Aurielle instead.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
But he didn’t add anything, just swallowed the words, looking down at their hands over his heart.
“Why, Lucian?” She wanted—no, she needed to know the answer.
She recalled that first shared dream—the hunger and desire between them. Then she thought further back, to the first time she remembered seeing him outside the hedge. The irrationality of the moment, the warmth between them. How he’d left in such a rush. The disappointment she’d felt after he was gone. She’d denied that feeling.
Then the time he’d asked her if she sang, how he’d disappeared in a hasty flurry. The starlight kiss. She looked back at this version of herself moving through the forest, singing, then looked back at Lucian and repeated her question. “Why?”
The landscape dripped away like droplets of water, making way for a new dreamscape. She was standing just outside the hedge as it had been before, her hand still pressed against Lucian’s chest. His eyes were on her.
“This is when we first met.” She smiled and stepped away from him to look for the opening in the hedge. When she found it, she walked inside. “I thought you hated me.”
“I was rather rude,” he replied.
She knew what he was doing, trying to distract her from her question, and whirled to tell him that she wouldn’t forget, but Lucian was right behind her.
“Why were you rude?” she asked.
